


rather not pray

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fugitives, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23305075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: “Could we live out here forever?” says Nijimura. “Do you know which mushrooms are poisonous?”
Relationships: Aomine Daiki/Nijimura Shuuzou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	rather not pray

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kornevable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kornevable/gifts).



> thanks for prompting! i'm always glad to write these two (tho this got a bit more angsty than i anticipated lskdjf)
> 
> brief references to violence/murder & selling drugs

Aomine falls asleep first, his short anxious breaths slowly deepening, his hand loose on the rifle, his head warm where it rests on Nijimura’s aching shoulder. It’s pain on top of soreness, pressure on a waterlogged floor, but worth it for whatever minutes of real sleep Aomine gets. Nijimura’s alone with his thoughts now, but it’s better than having to check Aomine, being dragged away from something coherent by his fidgeting. That’s rude, a little too much, enough to make Nijimura feel a little bit guilty. They’ve already snapped at each other so many times these past few days, the circumstances pulling at their tempers until they’re only threads, the splinters at the end of a broken toothpick. Nijimura really wishes he had a toothpick right now, or really a toothbrush. How long has it been since he’s been clean, teeth brushed and hair washed, dirt and grime wrung out of his body?

He can’t keep spacing out. They need a plan. They can lie behind an abandoned shrine tonight, covered by the leaves, but they need to ditch the rifle somewhere it can’t be traced to them. They need to cover their tracks; they need to make sure they’re not followed.

Maybe they should just turn themselves in. Maybe they’ll end up doing it anyway, or sabotaging themselves because they can’t run away from the guilt, because as soon as they stand still its hands are constricting their stomachs. If Nijimura thinks about it too much he’ll get nauseous, and that will only make things worse. 

They need to get rid of the rifle. Even if they’re the country’s most wanted men, no one knows they have it. They haven’t used it; they’d just taken it in a split second, and it’ll only compound how bad things will get for them. Guns don’t make anything better; Nijimura can hear his middle school gang leader saying it, as serious as he ever got about anything (other than how hard he’d socked Nijimura in the jaw when he’d left, and if only he could see Nijimura now).

No one knows their names, Nijimura thinks. No one had seen them clearly enough; no one had gotten close enough to get their DNA, except in the middle of a crowded train station where their DNA is indistinguishable from that of ordinary commuters. They’re fine, if they ditch the rifle, cover their tracks, and snow up somewhere else a few days later, soon enough to not be reported missing. 

There are other ways of tracking. There are phones and email accounts and surveillance footage and a million things that could connect them with being in the wrong place at the wrong time, murdering a man in boiling blood. Nijimura closes his eyes, and the man’s thrashing under his eyelids and, oh, God. Aomine is holding him down. The deal had gone horribly wrong; they’re drug dealers, not murderers. Or they were, at least; they’d gone from being able to hide from the watchful eyes of the police to standing in the spotlight.

If Nijimura’s stuck praying that the police won’t respect a dead person because he was buying drugs when he died, he’d rather not pray.

Aomine shifts in his sleep, head almost falling from Nijimura’s shoulder. Nijimura catches him, unable to stop a yawn escaping from his mouth. Perhaps it’s okay for him to sleep now, too.

* * *

They bury the rifle in the shallows of the creek, unloaded. It ought to rust away or sink--which is more likely? Nijimura can’t remember, or he never knew. He wishes there were some coffee or tea out here, but at least there’s rain to scare off people and cover their tracks.

“We could pass for lost hikers,” says Aomine.

It’s a week argument. The days of stubble on their faces, their lack of shelter and hiking gear (or even appropriate clothes) tell a different story.

“Didn’t you go camping a lot as a kid?”

“Didn’t you—?” Aomine cuts himself off.

Nijimura hears the bite of the retort left unspoken. Didn’t he hide from the law? It’s easy to do a better job when you’re a kid on a joy ride and you think you’re immortal. Once you’ve held death in your gloved hands, it’s hard not to. 

(They probably go his or Aomine’s DNA from the dead man’s clothes, from the ground around him; they’ve found the knife and somehow made the connection; they know; there is nowhere to go, nowhere to run.)

“Could we live out here forever?” says Nijimura. “Do you know which mushrooms are poisonous?”

“Maybe as long as we’re young,” says Aomine.

Easier explaining getting lost in the woods than appearing out of nowhere in twenty years, or dying of tetanus or an infected cut or the flu. It’s easy to think they can when the dead of summer is approaching and the sweat is only beginning to gather on the backs of their necks, when if they had iced coffee the cups would start to condense. It’s wishful thinking, but what for them isn’t? How much time can they keep borrowing and borrowing?

“We fucked up,” says Aomine.

“Yeah we did,” says Nijimura. 

It feels--not good, no less guilty, to say that out loud, to acknowledge the truth as the sound dies among the raindrops outside the shrine. 

Aomine takes Nijimura’s hand in his. It’s a little clammy, but nothing to complain about. It’s hard not to feel alone even though they’re in this together, always have been; even though this rests on both of their shoulders (yet another thing Nijimura’s failed at protecting Aomine from--he’s not his older brother, not his father, not his guardian angel, and he’d be shit at any of those for anyone, but some part of him wants to be good enough to handle that responsibility, spinning out of reach from him). 

“Hey,” says Aomine. “Don’t go spacing out on me.”

His voice wobbles, a house on a shaky foundation. Nijimura supposes that all around them’s been earthquakes for too long.


End file.
